The Morrígan
Release year: 2022
Production time: 5 months
Team size : 10 people
Game engine: Unity
Language: French
This graduation project game was presented at the 2022 Cannes International Games Festival as part of my Master’s degree in Humanities and Creative Industries.
The day of her sixteenth birthday has arrived. Trained since early childhood to fulfill the will of the goddess Morrígan, a young Celt answers her call and embarks on what she knows will be her final journey. In the north of Erin, she heads toward an island at the edge of the world, Danann island, where the Morrígan resides. Resolute, the young Celt is determined to become the goddess’s offering in order to save her people from the corruption of the forest.
Along her journey, the young Celt will confront the Abominations of the forest, thereby uncovering its secrets as well as the Morrígan’s true intentions.
Will she manage to break the cycle of the curse?
Drawing inspiration from the souls-like genre for its combat, The Morrígan offers a challenging experience in which the player must progress through a series of 10 levels, defeating all the Abominations that stand in their way.
To create The Morrígan’s combat system, I drew inspiration from fencing. Every strike counts, attacks are precise, and positioning is key. To defeat enemies, the player must target the highlighted weak point on their bodies.
When the player strikes an enemy without hitting its weak point, one of their own health points becomes “corrupted”, it is temporarily lost. Corrupted health points make the player more vulnerable and can only be restored by hitting a weak point or killing an enemy.
I also designed the healing system to reward risk-taking, unlike in Dark Souls where players can flee a dangerous situation to heal. In The Morrígan, using a healing item restores corrupted health points first, before addressing lost health. So, if a wounded player wants to maximize the health restored from their limited supply of potions, they must kill the enemy before healing. This mechanic creates exciting low-health combat situations and forces the player to adapt under pressure.
Product Owner: ABADA Eddy
Scrum Master: FRUCTUOSO Mikaël
Game designer: ROCHOTTE Lilian
Level designers: LAURENT Guillaume, ROCHOTTE Lilian
Level artist: THIBAUT Loïc
Developers: FRUCTUOSO Mikaël, BOIREAU Florian
3D artists: BERTA Manon, THIBAUT Loïc, SARROCHE Thomas
Concept artists: BERTA Manon, THIBAUT Loïc
VFX: DANSAC Lucas
Sound designer: ALEXANDRE Matis
Narrative designer: ABADA Eddy
What I did
Game design
- Combat design, mob design
- Progression system
- Balancing of the scoring system
- Design of the onboarding and of the tutorial UI to have a clear and instinctive first experience
Level design
- Preliminary design with the level design team to create varied gameplay scenarios and an engaging difficulty curve
- Iterative design using grayboxing within the game engine
- Collaborate with the level artist to ground the levels within the game’s universe
- Implement visual and sound assets in the game engine
Useful link
Available on:
desktop_windows PC
Supported operating system: Windows
To launch the game on your computer:
- Download the .zip available on the above link
- Open (or unzip) the folder on your computer
- Execute the “The-Morrigan-Project.exe” file
It is recommended to use a controller to get the intended gaming experience.